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Texture Animation
Texture Animation
Texture animation is used for creating polygons whose texturing changes in the game with time. There are two main types of texture animation, those using interpolation, and those not using interpolation. If an animation isn't interpolated then when played it will flip between a number of frames. With interpolation turned on the animation will scroll smoothly between frames (It only makes sense to use this if all the frames are using the same texture).
Each animation consists of a number of sequences, each containing several frames. In most cases there should only be one sequence, because the game will never be told that it should change sequence. Multiple sequences are used in a few special cases, such as for switches.
A new animation is created by selecting the appropriate polygons and then choosing Anim > Create from the menu. This will create an animation with one sequence of one frame, and cause the animation details to be shown on the right side of the screen. The following information is shown :ID - used internally to work out which polygons are part of the same animation
Anim Number - not used.
Num Seq - the number of sequences in the animation
Num Frames - the number of frames in the current sequence
Sequence - the current sequence (0 is the first sequence)
Frame - the current frame (0 is the first frame)You can select a previously created animation by choosing Anim> Select and then clicking on one of the polygons. Clicking on a polygon that doesn't have an animation will result in all animations being deselected. You can find out which polygons currently have animations by right clicking and choosing Flags > View > Animation from the pop up menu.
The basic process for creating an animation is as follows :1.Create the animation using Anim> Create.
2.Edit the texturing for the first frame.
3.Use Anim > Frame > Add to add a frame after the current one (This also advances the animation to the newly created frame)
4.Edit the texturing on the second frame.
5.Continue adding and editing frames until you have done all the frames required.If you need to go back to alter frames that you have already done, you can use Anim > Frame > Next or Anim > Frame > Previous to reach them (Pressing 1 and 2 can be used instead). Frames can be removed from the animation by using Anim > Frame > Remove. If the last frame is removed from a sequence, that sequence is destroyed. If the last sequence is removed from a polygon, the animation is removed completely.
After altering the frames of the animation you will probably want to change the speed of the animation. Selecting Anim > Sequence > Change Properties from the main menu will bring up a dialog box containing settings for the animation. You can set the number of frames per second by entering numbers in the two edit boxes next to fr/sec. There are also a number of check boxes for setting other properties for the sequence. In general 'loop' should be set for all animations, and 'not playing at start' should be left unchecked. The 'No Interp from last to first' option can be used with interpolated animations. It basically determines whether interpolation should be used when looping from the last frame back to the first frame of the animation.
Creating and editing extra sequences is simply a matter of using the appropriate options from the Anim > Sequence menu (There are shortcut keys for next and previous sequence - shift+1, shift+2). You can copy another animation sequence over the currently selected sequence using Anim > Sequence > Copy. When you do this you will be asked for the index number of the sequence that you want to copy from.
Animations can be viewed using the Anim > Play and Anim > Play All options. Selecting play will cause the current sequence to play on the current animation. Selecting play all will play the first sequence of all animations in the level. The animations will continue playing until you press a mouse button to stop them. (While playing sequences, all of the editing options are disabled).
Finally you can add and remove polygons from an animation using Anim > Add Polys and Anim > Remove Polys. The main reason for putting multiple polygons in the same animation, is so that you can alter the properties for all of them at once, and so that you can step through the frames for all of the polygons together.